The Rebellious Ones
by bayumlikedayum
Summary: The story of how just a girl and a potentially dangerous man started a rebellion, fell in love, were accused of treason, acted out against their oppressors, and did all of the little things that fall inbetween. Khan/OC.
1. One

**A/N:** This story is dedicated to my best friend, **Grade. A. Gen**, for being the one sitting next to me in a dark theater and squealing in unison with me when Cumberbatch's face came onscreen. And just being generally awesome. :)

This is just the introductory chapter. Things will pick up after this.

I hope y'all enjoy!

**One**

Every side of a story is different.

When I was a child, things used to be so black and white. You were either in the wrong or you weren't. You were in trouble or you weren't. You were a good kid or you weren't. There were distinct lines carved into everything I did and, over time, those lines blurred.

They called us traitors because of that. And of this crime, perhaps I _am_ guilty. But then again, perhaps not. I leave it up to you, my reader, to decide.

I was dying when they came to me. I pretended to listen to a long bedside speech by their representative, some man in civilian clothes, and when they held a paper next to my bed for me to sign, I was only just barely still conscious and they had to guide my hand to squiggle a few wavering letters before my hand went lax and I found I simply didn't care anymore.

And, to be quite honest, I thought that they had just preached me a sermon on funeral rates and I was signing an agreement for the price of my coffin. Because I was aware that I was going to die. There was a price tag on my life and I had become too expensive to waste any more effort on.

You see, I was sick. It was some exotic disease from outer space that no one could really pronounce the name of and exceedingly rare and, by the time it had been discovered, I had only a few weeks to live. And then, suddenly, quite suddenly, my life didn't matter anymore. Not my perfect grades, not my advanced schooling, not my considerable brain power. I was suddenly worthless because I had something growing inside me that had been discovered too late to be taken out.

So you see - assuming that the last words I heard were a final attempt to swindle me out of whatever little money I or my parents had left was really not that illogical. And I did not know that I would wake up again.

Needless to say, when I _did_ wake up again, I was beyond shocked.

It felt as though something had sucked me of whatever strength I'd had left and then replaced it with an energizer or a taser shock. The result left me shaky and breathless, but able to do so much more than I ever had before. And I was left somewhere in a hospital bed to "recuperate" until they could figure out what to do with me next because, damn it all, I was a living _miracle_ and I was too "important" to be "tampered with."

Bullshit.

I had been an experiment. They had perfected a rejuvenation serum on able-bodied and healthy humans, but they had never gotten a sick person to respond to the treatment and, as such, they were all extremely excited.

"They" were the lab rats. I never did learn their names. They were hardly important and I never really met them. I was stuck in a regulation hospital bed with monitors hooked up to me and every so often, one of them would come in to check my levels and say how very _exciting_ this all was. That's hardly something you're supposed to tell someone you won't let out of a hospital bed, but it hardly stopped them.

Getting a second chance at life was really rather anti-climatic. You think that you're never going to be ready for death, but you start to understand that death is coming to you anyway and you succumb - and then, suddenly, it isn't there anymore. You're still alive. And you're left wondering what else there is to do because you've just been confronted with your own worthlessness and your inevitable death - and then you're supposed to just keep on living normally with so much _power_ running through your veins where there was once weakness and sickness and idiocy?

They never understood us.

Because, of course, I found out eventually that there were more of us than just me. The Federation hadn't realized at that point that too much of a good thing is really a bad thing after all and they just kept making _more. _I met my "brothers" and my "sisters" on the day that I was released from my room and taken down to the mess hall.

I had of course been informed by a balding man in a white coat that I was part of something they called The Program - which was really _quite_ an original name for it - but it hadn't sunk in.

Until I saw them all, that is. And then when I did see them all sitting in front of me, wearing identical blue jumpsuits and eating obediently from their mess trays like a herd of munching, docile cows, it suddenly all became real.

That was when there were only about twenty-five of us. At that time, all of the others had joined voluntarily to be part of a revolutionary scientific experiment that "could change the course of the universe forever!" as our balding doctor was so fond of saying.

So I became one of them. Not only in clothing and strength, but also in communication. At first, I was the newcomer. But gradually, after a few weeks, I was accepted into their midst.

But there was one of us that was first, that was slightly different. He managed to stand apart and, eventually, he gained our unending loyalty.

Because this isn't a story about how I lost myself and was forced to become part of the crowd. This is a story of how I met, fell in love with, and defended the man that would someday become infamous for being cruel, harsh, vindictive, stone-like.

This is a story of how I found myself.


	2. Two

**A/N: **Thank you to everyone that reviewed, favorited, and followed. :) I never anticipated such a welcome and it made me so extraordinarily happy that you guys like the story so far. :)

More is coming soon!

I hope y'all enjoy. :)

**Two **

We were lost creatures, the lot of us. We had nowhere to call home but a lab that doubled as a training facility, no family but the other freaks around us, and no hope but the delusions we gave ourselves.

But he changed all that.

The first time I ever saw him was during my very first physical combat training session. We had two teachers who demonstrated a move and then walked amongst us to observe our progress as we broke off into pairs and tried to perfect the move while fighting. Unfortunately, I had never taken a fighting class of any kind – I hadn't even taken _yoga_ – and so my first fight was completely based off of instincts and reflexes.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I saw him. He was beautiful in a savage kind of way, with his legs spread shoulder-width and his arms folded across his chest, with his imposing cheekbones and piercing eyes. He had a stare unlike any I'd ever seen before. He could simply look at you and make you feel as though he knew every single one of your secrets and thoughts.

But right then, that gaze wasn't leveled at me or even at any of my fellow miracle wonders. He was looking at the guards.

There were guards everywhere, of course. I had supposed that it was only really natural in a medical lab to have people that could sound an alarm if something went horribly wrong, but nothing _had_ gone horribly wrong, so the guards were rather... unnecessary.

So why were they there?

I was distracted from my temporary reverie by a fist hitting my stomach and the wind knocking out of me. I didn't remember how I ended up bent over and gasping for air, but I remember looking up and realizing that _his_ eyes were leveled on me and his head had cocked ever so slightly.

That was the first time his eyes ever analyzed me. And it wouldn't be the last.

My only thought right then was that I hadn't ever thought I would gain a boy's attention by getting beat up.

Life settled into a mundane, weary routine. We had our daily physicals, our slop of a breakfast in the mess hall, a few lectures to "maximize our intelligence," then lunch, then strategistics and all things battle, then combat training. Dinner, an hour of monitored "free time," and another check-up, then lights out. We learned to be pristine and unfaulty, to be perfect and disciplined. We were learning to be soldiers.

But there's one thing that the doctors and the lab rats and the people above them could never control: our minds.

And _he_ made sure of that.

He was really very quiet, all things considered. He never said anything that didn't contribute to the conversation. I realize now that maybe this was his secret to being powerful: any thoughts that weren't brilliant were simply kept to himself. Of course, this theory requires him to actually have _had_ thoughts that weren't absolutely extraordinary and, at that point, I don't think any of us even comprehended the possibility of that notion. To us, he was something like a god.

Either way, I don't think I even heard his voice until the day when he first spoke to me.

It was another combat training session. I had been getting better and better, but I had also been growing so restless than my skin physically _itched_ sometimes. I was just so completely sick of it all – of the training, of the lectures that didn't challenge me at all, of the "free time" that was generally spent in the gym rather pointlessly, of the general feeling of being sheep led to some sort of slaughter, though we weren't entirely sure what kind of slaughter it was...

I was _just_ so _sick_ of it all.

And so, on that fateful day, I released my anger. However, rather unfortunately for my temporary sparring partner, it was on him. And the crack of my fist hitting his fist filled me with such _satisfaction_—

Because I could finally take my frustrations out on _someone_.

I am still somewhat ashamed that I let myself go so completely out of control, even though perhaps I might have needed it. Time blurred. There was nothing except me and the man I had conquered and my fists hitting him.

And then I came to myself abruptly, only to find myself atop a bloody man with my fist raised and guards advancing towards me with their weapons raised and my brothers and sisters looking at me with something akin to fear.

It hadn't done any good. The man under me was not guilty of any crime. He was not anything but a spectator, fellow prisoner. I was a freak. And I had become someone else, someone other than myself. The old me had buried herself somewhere in books and escaped through the solving of problems or satirizing the entire situation.

But this – this was not me.

The lab rats rushed in and carried my partner away, whispering in hushed tones and darting shocked glances at me.

And I was suddenly _so _tired.

But footsteps came behind me. And the most beautiful, regal, powerful voice I had ever heard said in my ear: "Don't be ashamed. Strength cannot be contained."

I knew what he meant. He meant that I was held prisoner by the schedules and physicals and routines that the lab rats and the doctors pushed upon us were our prisons. But they had created us, they had created these monsters – they had created pure _strength_. And then they expected to contain it? No.

We wouldn't – couldn't – be contained.

"All you have to do is learn to channel it in the right direction."

Every hair on my body prickled at his voice, his breath on my ear. That was the day I came alive again.

That was the day I found a new purpose.


	3. Three

**A/N:** Sorry for the lack of update! Things have been crazy recently. I'll be updating sporadically for the next few weeks, since I'll be out of town a lot. Thank you to everyone who has supported and continues to support this story! :) I hope y'all enjoy.

**Three**

I lived in fear of losing control again. Of course, I remembered his words – whoever he was, the contained man who had murmured in my ear moments before I'd been escorted away from the scene of my crime – but any thought given to them was mostly puzzlement. I needed to find a new direction, of course, a new purpose. But what direction, what purpose? There didn't seem to be an alternative route. If I had been prisoner before, well… security was amped and I was put in solitary confinement.

In a dimly lit _exam room_, of all places.

I mean, okay, let's think about this: if you want to confine someone, you'd think that you'd put them in a jail cell or something. But I – the non-threatening freak science project who'd _only_ exhibited signs of extreme rage an was capable of overpowering around three guards – was out in an _exam room_ and given_ physicals_. Chained to a _bed_ instead of behind bars where I couldn't hurt anyone.

I'm not sure if I was insulted that they thought I was so unthreatening or relieved that they thought I was so harmless.

But then again, I think they knew that I wasn't going to try to escape: there was no place out there in the world for me anymore. I had been stripped of that the moment that I became "extraordinary."

I had a visitor, though.

My "Creator" came in to inspect me. He asked why I had done the things that I had done and what I had been feeling and how I was feeling now and if I thought it would happen again—

And the entire time, the Creator jotted notes down on a little notepad.

I was experiencing a glitch and they were trying to fix me, like a mechanic fixes a car. Unfortunately, they forgot that I was still at least partly human, even if I was enhanced and chemically altered, and the point of being human is to feel emotion and respond accordingly.

They should have been expecting it: then again, they should have also realized that humans can't be fixed, but they did an absolutely _fantastic_ job of that, didn't they.

"You didn't do anything wrong, you know." His voice filled the room. I hadn't heard him come in and I started, looking up from where I'd been staring at the tray of inedible food that had been placed in my lap by one of the guards. There he was, standing on the other side of the room, nearly imperious in his sheer power.

His eyes were leveled at me, calculating and discerning. Whatever he found hidden in the vestiges of my soul, he didn't comment on it. He just clasped his hands behind his back and watched my face, my body. He was sizing me up.

I wasn't particularly sure that I liked it. He made me uneasy. Like I wasn't quite good enough to be in his presence. But then again, I suppose that was a natural enough reaction: I'd never seen or met anyone like him before.

"Of course not," I finally replied to his greeting (or lack of). "And that's why I'm chained to a bed."

His mouth raised at the corners slightly, as though I had just found his mild approval.

"Of course you are," he said. "They are threatened by your show of power and they want you to know that what you did wasn't to their liking."

"Yes, well, it wasn't to my liking either."

"He deserved what he got."

... _What_ had he just said? I _had_ to have heard him wrong. I had heard him say that my sparring partner – our fellow project, our "brother" by necessity, one of us – deserved to have his nose broken and a concussion and a few cracked ribs, along with a few other minor injuries.

Was he out of his _mind_?

"How do you mean?" I asked him. I think my face must have been stretched into an expression of stupid incredulity, since he gave me a look that seemed to mentally measure my IQ.

"He was weaker than you. He allowed himself to be beaten. He didn't defend himself properly. He has been in the cycle for months longer than you have and he was unable to defend himself. If he is so weak, then he should be defeated. You were simply the one to do it."

"But I lost control."

"Control must be learned. It isn't born with you." He paused and gave me another unfathomable look. "When you were a child, you had toys. You had to be taught to share them. You had to be _taught_ self-control. And now, when you are reborn with strength and power beyond your imagination – of course you must be taught to have control over these things as well."

It made sense. Probably only because he was the one who had said it and he was eloquent enough to get the point across, but it still made sense for whatever reason.

I didn't argue with his logic. I _wanted_ him to be right, so I didn't try to tear him apart – which, I know now, would have resulted in my utter humiliation – and I simply asked the question that steered our courses away from the destinies laid out for us.

"Who will teach me?"

He only took a moment to observe me before he answered this time. Perhaps he was checking to see if I was ready for the answer or if I really wanted to learn how to control myself and I wasn't just humoring him. Whatever he found in my face and in my eyes, it must have been what he was looking for.

"I will," he said.

And that was an end to it. There was obviously no one better to teach me than him. No one more qualified. He was the one of us who spoke of logic and control and superiority. If anyone was qualified, it was him.

I glanced back down at the tray of food that I had yet to eat with distaste.

"Will your lessons in self-control also deal with me learning to control my taste buds into liking the food?"

He smiled then: an actual smile, not just a twist of the lips.

"I don't think even the best of teachers would be able to make someone like _this_ food," he replied.

That was when I knew that this really might not be such a bad thing. If he had some form of a sense of humor, we would probably – might possibly – get along.

I don't know what he saw in me that day. I never have, I still don't, and I probably never will. I'd like to think that it was some sort of strength or quiet brilliance, but I honestly have no idea. I didn't quite grasp at the time what an honor he had given me. To train me individually, apart from the others – it was like his form of choosing me to be the one right under him, the person who had learned from him personally. He had just given me more power and I hadn't realized it yet because I was still so enthralled with his.

But like I said, I have no idea what quality he saw in me induced him to do such an unbelievable thing as pick me.

But I'm glad he did.


	4. Four

**A/N: **Sorry for the lack of update! Please review and let me know what you think so far. :)

**Four**

It took a while to settle down enough for him - whoever he was - to give me the promised lessons. When I was released from my handcuffs (that I could have broken quite easily if I'd felt like it) and my hospital bed, my fellow freaks were too wary of me for a few weeks for me to be able to sneak off for an hour or do during free time. Suddenly, I had become the monster of monsters, just because I'd lost control.

I was the first, that is. I wasn't the only one.

Honestly, I really didn't blame the other projects, my "family." If I'd seen a girl bash a forty year old man's face in, I would have been a little cautious around her too.

That didn't mean that it didn't get to me, though. I mean, what did I have except for the people who were like me? I'd lost my family. They thought I was dead. I didn't have contact with the outside world anymore. I'd become a specimen purposed only for experimentation and research.

Or, at least, that's what they told us. But then again, that didn't really explain why they were teaching us martial arts.

It was about three weeks after my bout when the second case occurred. This time, it was one of the older men. He was - had been, that is, before the serum - around sixty years old. He had been in the program long enough to be designated a name. That's what the scientists did to the ones of us who had passed the three month mark: they designated us new names, gifting us with new and unusual monikers to fit the beings we were becoming. After all, we were all _so_ precious and valuable, why would they give us ordinary names?

Of course, I'm fairly sure that they would have given their subjects names even if they'd been rats or mice or even cockroaches. Those bastards were just so _proud_ of us, they had to put their own mark on us. Brand us as their own. Take away our identity. Pretend that we were their playthings.

But as I was saying, the second case had already achieved his name. He was officially one of the elders, one of the ones who had lasted, one of the leaders. And then, quite suddenly, he had a fit of rage in the lunchroom and punched his best friend (or the closest thing we were allowed to have to a best friend, which was a bunkmate) because he'd wanted his food.

I had been a freak accident. But now... Now the scientists were starting to look a little puzzled. Like this was bigger than just one young woman who'd lost control. Maybe this was a side affect. Maybe this wasn't as easily controlled as they thought.

It took seven guards to bring down the guy. Seven. With tasers. And even then, they had to give him constant shots to keep him subdued.

It was the day after that, when the lab rats were still confused as to what they were supposed to do next, that I had my first lesson.

Needless to say, it was not what I had expected.

He'd come up next to me during the demonstrative period in training and murmured, "There's a small empty room next to the maintenance deck. Meet me there when Relaxation begins."

Relaxation was what they called our free time. Apparently, they thought it was relaxing for us to run on a treadmill when we wouldn't even break a sweat for a few hours.

Anything would be more relaxing than that. So I did as he said and I ducked away from the group that went to the gym looking for normalcy in exercise during free time, and I hurried down the uniform hallways to where he'd directed me.

He was waiting for me, hands clasped behind his back, face blank, back straight as an arrow, his eyes still as sharp as a hawk's. He thrummed with control. Not just control over himself either, but being in the same room as him, you thought that perhaps he controlled every little detail of the environment and anything he wanted to happen could - and would - happen.

"Sit down."

"On the floor?"

"Do you see a chair anywhere?"

No, I didn't. In fact, there was nothing in this room but a few pipes running down the walls. It looked like a storage room that had been completely forgotten about.

So there wasn't a chair.

I sat down on the cold floor and stared up at him expectantly.

He didn't do anything. He just stood there and ignored me, looking exactly like a statue.

I wasn't made to wait (or to be ignored, for that matter. A girl can only take so much, even if she does have superhuman abilities.) After what seemed like ten minutes of impatient waiting, my fingers twitched and then started unconsciously tapping as I turned my gaze back to the room to see if I'd missed anything, because _surely_ this wasn't going to be the extent of my training.

His mouth turned up at the corner.

"Just as I predicted."

Startled, I looked back at him.

"What?"

"You started fidgeting well within two minutes of entering the room."

"Well, of course I'm going to fidget: I'm sitting on a cold floor, staring at a man who's not moving. It makes me _want_ to fidget just to make sure I'm still alive and haven't turned to stone."

"That's because you're on edge." That's when he finally looked at me. "If you have control over yourself, you're able to focus on the moment and concentrate inwardly. It will diminish your stress and help you relax. This will assist you in keeping your anger in check."

"Were you a yoga teacher in your previous life?"

His eyebrow gave the slightest quirk before his face settled back into its calm mask.

"Think of it this way..."

And so my training began.

He left me very little time for smart remarks. And of course my training wasn't limited to him waiting for me to start fidgeting. He might not have actually taught me yoga, but he taught me focus and focus and, well, more focus. Every now and then, he threw a bit of advice on how to control my temper as well, which was rather kind of him. I'd lost track of time by the end of my first session. He didn't say anything about how I did, but there was a set to his lip that didn't look like it meant that he was disappointed, so I hoped it meant that he was pleased with my progress (if I'd had any. I certainly felt like I hadn't.) But then again, I really wasn't sure what his expectations had even _been_ for my performance.

He turned away from me and told me I was free to go. I opened my mouth to say something smart - or, rather, something not very smart to say to _him_ - but what came out of my mouth was much different than the "Are you my commanding officer? No? I thought not," that I'd been planning on.

Instead, what I asked him was, "Who are you?"

He turned back to me for a moment and his eyes met mine.

And for that one brief moment, I didn't see a monster or a science project or a thing the lab rats had named, marked, branded, whatever. I saw a man who had lost something very valuable and didn't know what to do about it. And I think that in this case, I knew exactly what it was.

His identity.

But then his face smoothed out again and any expression that had been flickering through his eyes was gone, wiped away by his sheer will to be strong and be self-controlled.

"My name is Khan," he said.

It wasn't until I'd left and joined the others back in the recreation room that I realized: I'd asked who he was, not what he'd been named. He'd deliberately given me the wrong answer.

Somewhere in the mix, I'd forgotten that sometimes your name doesn't dictate who you are: and just like a branded cattle can still run away from its' owner, Khan could still be somebody that the scientists didn't want him to be.

He was still a man. Not a chemical experiment. A man. And, unfortunately for his engineers, he was one of the few men in the world who actually thought and planned. He was a danger to them, and yet they were so outstandingly _proud_ of their "creation" that they put him in charge of the people they'd created to be just like him. Because he was brilliant and amazing and incredible, more incredible than they, the lab rats, could ever hope to be.

They didn't even think that he might have been dangerous to them, that he might want to be free again, that he might take revenge on them for stealing away his life.

They didn't bother to think that maybe he wasn't _happy_ being controlled and manipulated and trotted around on a leash. They hadn't created him to be content with chains and shackles, and yet they had the nerve to accuse him of treason when he finally broke free of them.


End file.
